


Rob's Dream

by Bruce J (HowNovel)



Series: Snowstorm [2]
Category: Starman (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1993-09-15
Updated: 1993-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 01:06:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HowNovel/pseuds/Bruce%20J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>He’s been with me for over six years now. He’s like an old friend. I know him well, and I guess I should, because I created him. His name is Robert Michael Barnes. He’s a gregarious and precarious fellow who always seems to be in the middle of action, adventure, danger, and excitement.</p><p>He was born at the word processor some time around April, 1987, when STARMAN was still on the air (ah, those were the days…sigh) and I had gotten the itch to write my first STARMAN story. It would be just a little story, I thought, a small action adventure thing. The action and adventure worked out okay, but in the process my “little” story grew to be 57 pages long.</p><p>I don’t know if I’ll ever publish that seminal story, as it became anachronistic after I found out about a nice bunch of folks named “Spotlight STARMAN” and rashly decided to join them and volunteer for a few things.  Part of the basic premise of that original story was later reworked into another story, <i>Snowstorm</i>, that I thought would only take a few pages—around 40 of them, as it turned out. Somehow, you get to working on these things, and they take on a life of their own, and go on and on like the Energizer bunny.</p><p>Anyway, I’d developed a character for my original story. I chose the names Robert and Barnes for him because they happened to be the first and last names of two of my favorite guys at the time.  He was a reckless and fickle astronaut who helped our guys in one of their innumerable escapes from Fox.</p><p>As many of you know, <i>Snowstorm</i> is about the space shuttle, so I had the perfect opportunity to use the Rob Barnes character again. I did, and found that I wasn’t the only one who liked him…he has quite a following in our family. I must admit he’s one of the most enjoyable and endearing characters I’ve created. He’s also one of the most persistent.</p><p>You see, in between my first story and my “head-first” entry into STARMAN fandom, I started working on this other novel called <i>The Sky Be Yours</i>, which is about Earth coming into contact with another planet. It doesn’t really have anything to do with STARMAN, although it was certainly influenced by it…that blue light has gone on to influence and enrich my life in many ways, but those are other stories. Anyway, I again had occasion to use an astronaut, and Rob made his second appearance. He was in trouble again, as usual, and there was a lot of background information about him and his twin brother, James, who is quite unlike him—except, of course, in appearance.</p><p>Then <i>Snowstorm</i> came along and Rob’s fame was guaranteed. In 1990 Todd  and Sandra S. conspired to produce a beautiful <i>Snowstorm</i> artwork, which I’ll proudly display to you if you’re ever here at the Island. Another year for Christmas, Todd gave me a “mission specialist” certificate for Rob.</p><p><i>Snowstorm</i> got revised many times, but I didn’t reprint it until 1996, when my second STARMAN fanzine, <b>Starlight</b>, was published. There are so many other things to do, and so little time. (Isn’t the rate that time goes by amazing? One of those great armchair physicists should be devoting lots of research and tax dollars into investigating why time is accelerating so rapidly, don’t you think?) Nor have I finished <i>The Falling Bird</i>, the sequel to <i>Snowstorm</i>, or <i>Out of Bounds</i>, a second possible sequel. Both of them will, of course, feature Rob, giving him six appearances in my fiction. Talk about a recurring role! If this guy was real he’d be complaining to me about typecasting!  We learn a lot more about Rob’s past and his family in these stories.</p><p>Then it happened…one night I had a dream, which turned out to be the inspiration for a story featuring Rob’s seventh appearance, the one you just read. Like all his other adventures, this one turned out to be an exciting and powerful one. At this moment, I don’t foresee him turning up in any other stories, but I’m almost sure he will. He’s like a Star Island sand dollar, which is real similar to a “bad penny,” and even less negotiable.  We haven’t seen the last of Rob. He’ll show up again, and I’ll welcome him when he does. He’s been good to me.</p></blockquote>





	Rob's Dream

Editor’s Note: in “SNOWSTORM,” astronaut Robert Barnes had an inexplicable, life-changing experience.

 

ROB’S DREAM

by Bruce J

 

IT HAD BEEN two days since Rob came back from space. Two rough, tortuous days. During the day he was deep in debriefings, although he wasn’t able to tell the debriefers much. He knew as much as they did—that some unknown disaster aboard the shuttle Inferno had killed three men and destroyed the orbiter. The officers were not pleased with Rob’s inability to provide the answers they were seeking. He remembered the initial part of the ordeal, the orbiter losing power, passing out, and awaking to find Commander Nelson and the two mission specialists dead. Later he found the assassin–a bottle of the lethal nerve agent CYA hooked into the air supply. He had miraculously survived by virtue of having zits—the tetracycline he took for them had bonded to the nerve agent in his bloodstream, rendering it relatively inert. He was alive, but not entirely well. The rest of the experience was enveloped in a misty, amnesiac haze. No matter how hard he tried, he simply could not remember. And despite repeated prodding from the debriefers, all he could tell them was “I can’t remember.” 

The next thing he did remember clearly was sitting in the pilot’s chair of the Soviet shuttle Buran, holding a Soviet gun in his hand. Somehow he had gotten aboard the Soviet shuttle, incapacitated the only crewmember aboard, Cosmonaut Murova, then managed to make an emergency landing at LAX. But he only remembered fragments of what happened before that. Murova and Theodore Caswell, who escorted the shuttle down, had testified about the shuttle landing. But Murova refused to talk about anything prior to Rob knocking her out, and Rob couldn’t remember.

The military leaders involved in the investigation had also been very harsh on Rob for his divulgence of the existence of the Skyhunter weapon. He would get his honorable discharge, but his send-off would be a chilly one. He had already been told that he would never have a security clearance or a government job again. He was out of the military and the astronaut corps. He had sacrificed one of the greatest privileges anyone could have—going up into space—and now he was not sure it had been worth it.

He had watched his television interview twice. It was fascinating—although the man on the screen looked like him, he didn’t act like him. He had too much enthusiasm, spoke with too much conviction about his opinions. For those few minutes, Rob had been the kind of person he’d never thought he could be: self-assured, determined, and certain of his convictions. Watching the video, Rob found himself liking the guy on the screen a lot more than he liked himself—and yet, he had been that guy. Somewhere inside him was the self he’d always wanted to be, but always managed to suppress.

It had been an uncomfortable two days of retrospect. He had always been a braggart, a jock, a chauvinistic, even ruthless womanizer. He realized now that he’d been that way for far too long, and he didn’t want to be that way again. Looking back, remembering, he found himself feeling ashamed of the way he treated people in the past. He had said and done a lot of callous things. He wished he could go back and undo a lot of them, or at least apologize to some of the people he’d hurt. He couldn’t, but at least he was feeling regrets. That was a step.

For the last half-hour he had been methodically cleaning his Glock 9mm pistol. It was something he enjoyed doing; something he took pride in. He often cleaned his guns when he needed to relax and get his mind off of something troubling. It hadn’t worked as well tonight as it usually did, but he had a lot more on his mind than usual.

He looked at the clock. It was 1:30AM and he had another day of debriefing and hearings ahead of him, but he was reluctant to climb into bed. Ever since his return, he dreaded the onset of night. It was a strange, mindless fear. He knew there was no rational reason for it, but it plagued him anyway. He knew he was having nightmares, for he could remember bits and fragments of them when he awoke, at least for awhile. Glimpses of bodies being flung by explosions, people screaming and dying, and a sinister, mechanical droning noise. The disturbing images faded quickly in the refuge of daylight, and Rob was not eager to prevent their departure and remember more about the nocturnal terrors haunting him. He preferred not to know; he had enough to worry him in the waking world.

He carefully placed the gun back into its case and put it away. Then he went through the motions of getting ready for bed, feeling anxiety grow like a malignant lump in his stomach. When he turned out the light and slipped under the cool sheets, he felt incredibly vulnerable and alone in the quiet blackness. He stretched out and let exhaustion overtake him.

As he fell asleep, clouds of light drifted past him, shadows darting in their mist, shapeless masses that blended and coalesced until they resolved themselves into objects. The scene cleared to lucidity. Rob was standing on a sidewalk near a fenced-in park. People ran past him, terrified, screaming in horrified panic. Several cars sat abandoned in the road, most of them damaged by collisions.

A bus pulled up to the corner ahead of him, stopped by one of the dead cars. Even though it was so loaded that people were literally hanging out the windows and doors, more people ran up to it and tried to get aboard. They were beaten back by those already on the bus. Rob’s mouth dropped open in shock at the violence. The driver gunned the engine and the bus lurched forward, broadsiding the dead car and tossing it aside. One man leaped for the bus and grabbed hold of one of the side-view mirrors, dangling from it momentarily before he fell to the street.

Rob looked around him, surveying the scene of chaos. He was near one corner of the park, and beyond the fence he could see injured people lying on the ground, including a young boy and an old woman. He quickly sprinted to the chain-link fence and started to scale it, heaving himself up to the top, a dozen feet off the ground. He dived over the top and dropped to the ground, landed awkwardly on his feet, and pitched over. He got up and dashed to the woman’s side. She was horribly bruised, probably from trampling. Rob’s teeth bristled. What could terrify people enough that they would trample an old woman nearly to death?

The woman writhed and howled in agony as Rob tried to assess her condition. His heart fell as he realized that she was bleeding internally and the chances of getting her to a hospital in time to save her were minimal. Rob shuddered and turned to the boy. He was young, perhaps six or seven, and had likewise been trampled. Rob’s stomach turned as he saw the big, purple bruises covering the boy’s legs and arms. The boy looked up at him. “Please, help me,” he begged.

Rob was about to pick him up when he heard screams in the distance. Ragged, horrified screams, obscuring a low, menacing rumble. Chills popped up Rob’s spine. He knew that rumble. He turned to look. A woman was running towards him, three hundred yards away, her eyes bugged out in terror, sprinting for all she was worth. Another hundred yards beyond her, a large, forest-green painted tank lurched over the grass. Rob watched in stunned disbelief as one of the tank’s small guns turned on the woman and fired. She was hit square in the back, thrown forward like a rag doll. She didn’t get up. The ominous droning got louder. Rob scooped the boy into his arms and ran for the fence. He looked up in dismay. The fence was far too high; he would never be able to get both himself and the boy over it. He turned back around. More people were running towards him, and his heart froze as he watched the tank take them out with chilling accuracy. His eyes searched the park. He saw another tank in the distance, and another one beyond that, a phalanx of destruction mowing down anything that moved. There was no way out.

Tears spilled from Rob’s eyes as he laid the wounded boy on the ground near the fence. “Stay quiet and still,” he said to the crying lad. Rob looked back at the oncoming tank. It was an M-14, an unmanned tank controlled by a computer system that had somehow gone awry, some horrendous software failure or error that had sent the tanks loose, thinking civilians were enemy targets. And it was coming into firing range.

Rob had no choice. If he wanted to live, he had to leave the boy behind. He climbed the fence and dived over it, but his pant leg caught on the top and he dangled precipitously from it. For a moment panic surged up in his chest, until he remembered his training and calmed himself. He bent up, clawing his way to the top of his fence so he could free his leg. He fell to the ground, more roughly this time. He winced and got up. North of the park corner was a rising hill, and he began to scale it as quickly as he could. A few bodies were scattered over the hill. The droning hum grew louder. As the tank approached, Rob lied on the ground near the trunk of a large tree, hoping he was far enough away to evade the tank’s thermal scanning sensors.

The tank rumbled towards the fence, tearing up the grass. It rolled over the old woman without hesitation. Rob’s stomach churned. Horror gripped him as he saw movement near the fence. The young boy was trying to pull himself up. “No!!!” Rob screamed. The tank’s gun aimed and fired, and the boy fell backwards into a lifeless heap. Rob buried his face in the ground and sobbed, but only for a moment. He stood up and ran briskly to the north with resolute determination. Behind him, the tank crashed through the fence and moved relentlessly onward.

Rob found a phone booth and called his friend, Theo. “Are you watching TV?” Theo asked, his voice thick with horrified awe. “There are M-14 tanks on the loose.”

“I know,” Rob said. “I’m right in the middle of it, down by the park. Meet me at the base, Theo. We gotta try to stop these things.” Rob left the phone dangling as he ran for the base, some three blocks away. The tanks had already been through the area. Dead and injured people littered the street. Rob ignored them as he sprinted through the military facility’s unguarded gate and across the parking lot.

Once inside the base, Rob made a beeline to the computer center. The facility had been deserted in a hurry. Chairs were toppled, papers strewn all over the floor. The building had been hit by mortar fire in a couple of places and Rob had to carefully pick his way through the rubble.

He finally entered the computer center. It was also deserted, but a bank of monitors on top of the large computer console displayed data coming from the renegade tanks, including live video. Rob sat at a terminal and called up the files on RT-11A, a computer virus that had been designed to infiltrate the operating systems of enemy tanks. Rob could only hope that it would work well against an American tank.

Rob established a downlink with the tanks and started transmitting the virus. It was disguised as an enemy communiqué so that the tanks would record and analyze it. He heard footsteps behind him. Theo had arrived and squeezed Rob’s shoulders supportively before sitting down at a terminal himself.

The initial viral onslaught worked and the tanks stopped firing and halted as their software systems were attacked. The tanks had virus-resistant programming, however, and Theo and Rob would have to make instant, constant modifications to the viral instructions to keep them effective.

It was hellish, hard work. The software reacted more quickly than they could, and every so often Rob’s heart would sink as he saw the tanks lurch forward again, only to drift to a stop as he and Theo confused them again. Finally, they were able to convince the tanks that a catastrophic hardware failure had occurred, and they shut down for good.  
  
---  
  
The next day, Rob was at the Capitol building, wearily standing by outside another hearing room, when a group of senators and lobbyists went by. Senator Grant Steering from Wisconsin recognized him. “Hey, Rob. How goes the debriefings?”

“Pretty tired of them, sir,” Rob said. “How about you?”

“Just about to convene the hearing on the budget appropriation for the M-14.”

Rob went still with dread as he suddenly remembered what he’d been dreaming about for the past few days. “I’d like to testify,” he said.

The senator shrugged. “Sure. We always like to hear from you boys that have to deal with all this hardware.” Steering studied him. “Something wrong?”

“Yes,” Rob said. “That tank is a mistake.”  
  
---  
  
“Computers are wonderful things,” Rob said, at the podium of the crowded hearing room, “and the idea of a unmanned tank is obviously appealing. But it is, in fact, a terrifying idea. I can attest from personal experience that our military places too much trust in technology. Technology is a tool, not an end. We have an obligation to protect the people, and to faithfully do that, we need to have people in those tanks—even if they’re only there to pull the plug when something goes wrong.”  
  
---  
  
Later that day, Theo called Rob. “I guess you stirred something up,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Rob asked.

“The appropriation failed by one vote. Senator Steering’s.”

Rob sighed with relief. For all he knew, his nightmare might never come true. He certainly hoped it wouldn’t. But he didn’t want to take any chances. As long as people put too much faith in machines, the potential for a catastrophic disaster would always be there.

But not tonight. The world was safe, until the next time.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> He’s been with me for over six years now. He’s like an old friend. I know him well, and I guess I should, because I created him. His name is Robert Michael Barnes. He’s a gregarious and precarious fellow who always seems to be in the middle of action, adventure, danger, and excitement.
> 
> He was born at the word processor some time around April, 1987, when STARMAN was still on the air (ah, those were the days…sigh) and I had gotten the itch to write my first STARMAN story. It would be just a little story, I thought, a small action adventure thing. The action and adventure worked out okay, but in the process my “little” story grew to be 57 pages long.
> 
> I don’t know if I’ll ever publish that seminal story, as it became anachronistic after I found out about a nice bunch of folks named “Spotlight STARMAN” and rashly decided to join them and volunteer for a few things.  Part of the basic premise of that original story was later reworked into another story, _Snowstorm_ , that I thought would only take a few pages—around 40 of them, as it turned out. Somehow, you get to working on these things, and they take on a life of their own, and go on and on like the Energizer bunny.
> 
> Anyway, I’d developed a character for my original story. I chose the names Robert and Barnes for him because they happened to be the first and last names of two of my favorite guys at the time.  He was a reckless and fickle astronaut who helped our guys in one of their innumerable escapes from Fox.
> 
> As many of you know, _Snowstorm_ is about the space shuttle, so I had the perfect opportunity to use the Rob Barnes character again. I did, and found that I wasn’t the only one who liked him…he has quite a following in our family. I must admit he’s one of the most enjoyable and endearing characters I’ve created. He’s also one of the most persistent.
> 
> You see, in between my first story and my “head-first” entry into STARMAN fandom, I started working on this other novel called _The Sky Be Yours_ , which is about Earth coming into contact with another planet. It doesn’t really have anything to do with STARMAN, although it was certainly influenced by it…that blue light has gone on to influence and enrich my life in many ways, but those are other stories. Anyway, I again had occasion to use an astronaut, and Rob made his second appearance. He was in trouble again, as usual, and there was a lot of background information about him and his twin brother, James, who is quite unlike him—except, of course, in appearance.
> 
> Then _Snowstorm_ came along and Rob’s fame was guaranteed. In 1990 Todd and Sandra S. conspired to produce a beautiful _Snowstorm_ artwork, which I’ll proudly display to you if you’re ever here at the Island. Another year for Christmas, Todd gave me a “mission specialist” certificate for Rob.
> 
>  _Snowstorm_ got revised many times, but I didn’t reprint it until 1996, when my second STARMAN fanzine, **Starlight** , was published. There are so many other things to do, and so little time. (Isn’t the rate that time goes by amazing? One of those great armchair physicists should be devoting lots of research and tax dollars into investigating why time is accelerating so rapidly, don’t you think?) Nor have I finished _The Falling Bird_ , the sequel to _Snowstorm_ , or _Out of Bounds_ , a second possible sequel. Both of them will, of course, feature Rob, giving him six appearances in my fiction. Talk about a recurring role! If this guy was real he’d be complaining to me about typecasting!  We learn a lot more about Rob’s past and his family in these stories.
> 
> Then it happened…one night I had a dream, which turned out to be the inspiration for a story featuring Rob’s seventh appearance, the one you just read. Like all his other adventures, this one turned out to be an exciting and powerful one. At this moment, I don’t foresee him turning up in any other stories, but I’m almost sure he will. He’s like a Star Island sand dollar, which is real similar to a “bad penny,” and even less negotiable.  We haven’t seen the last of Rob. He’ll show up again, and I’ll welcome him when he does. He’s been good to me.


End file.
